Prose before hos

There's a long history of the things I have done, celebrated, and learnt after failing. There's a lot of reflection and introspection to do, but not today. We've done that to death in the last two years. It's my fault largely, getting comfortable at a spot with an idea is never a good thing. Heck, even a post graduate degree gets over in two years.

In where I mark my personal growth, May usually amounts to a fresh start for me. Agreed, it has not been as bright as what things seemed twelve years ago but still, quite refreshing. I had goals- to get into a college of my choice, to get to a point in life where I wanted. I have crossed them all. I recall saying that out loud, "everything I ever wanted, material or not, I have it. What next?" Instead, I spent six months wondering, if what I wanted was really that easy and if I was unambitious.

I'm amazed to be one with my goals, insofar as putting things to my mind and achieving it. Ambitious or not, it is incredible to achieve all that you seek and put your heart into. However, the imposter syndrome is a bitch, whatever that is and and if it's real.

Just when I thought I had peaked, I learnt to appreciate what I had and all that I am yet to do. In the last one month, securing four letters of interest for a visiting Fellowship for my PhD is a testament to that. I did not imagine I would receive email(s) from the people who did, even the rejections. It's quite spectacular to live through that.

You should try it, just to know the high. It surpasses all joys of the world. Being validated and wanted is just as dangerous as a line of cocaine. There's a lot at stake and you're innit for the pleasure, the high.

Where do we go from here?
There's so much to do and so much to look forward to. Things will not be comfortable or cushy, or even handed to me in a platter just the way it has been all this while but I won't let that kill me or stop me from setting goals. I am onto things which will shape the next three months of my life, which essentially means putting myself first and being relentlessly selfish. It's the need of the hour.

I spent three years paying my dues and despite what the universe might say and hold for me, I think we're done. We gotta call it quits. Gotta walk out of commitments that don't value me. This has been the outtake of the past year and I'm happy to say, it's reflecting across all the facets of my life. Or as much as I am trying for it to.

To revel in the present is to be stagnant, to say, this is it for me.

It isn't over until it actually is.

I may just be 12% done but I have the remaining 88% to look forward to - to be upset at the failures and to enjoy what is yet to come, despite all my grudges.

Here's to the last year of us being a baby. And to the last of me being cushy.

"Why can't this building burn to ground? Why do we have to come to this office everyday? Why can't we be like Sri Lanka and get into a Civil War? Did you know they declared Emergency, they have more vision than us. Wish they declared Emergency here. We wouldn't have to come to work. Wish I could add to this to my Amazon wishlist."

On my birthday eve last year, I found myself going through a rather moving experience. I have been thinking about it, if not every day, at least once a week since the episode. I had a revelation about it recently.

During my brief time in London, I decided to schedule a visit to St. Paul's Cathedral. Friends, convent school hangover and sightseeing porn together, I was on a high to include as much as possible. However, if I'd planned better between sleeping and wasting my hours drinking, I'd have managed to attend the Sunday mass. Clearly, planning my life isn't a priority in my case.

After changing two buses and walking a fair bit, I managed to reach the place and stood in the queue to get the ticket. It was the only ticketed space beside the musical I paid for and didn't quite mind paying to get in. Again, call it the convent school hangover but I'd have probably not done the same for another religious institute doing the same. My first impression of St. Paul's was extremely underwhelming. This is what these two friends were raving about? Sure, it's beautiful with all the art and the architectural design but man, it was underwhelming.

Somehow, after checking about the entire space, I found myself kneeling and crying loudly. It was surreal. I'd not done this, insofar as going inside a religious space to "pray" and I did not plan to do this. It just happened.

As soon as I kneeled down to offer a prayer, I burst out crying. All of the past year, my family, people I love and everyone else came to my mind and how everyone conspired to make the trip happen. What seems so trivial to people when they say they "travel" took years to happen and for me to experience that. I found myself in the church a few hours before my birthday and it seemed like an occasion just as good as any to be thankful to that imaginary man or woman we apparently pray to, to hear us and apparently answer for our wishes.

It was heavy and moving and all-consuming. It took me a long time to get out of the place in a state where I wasn't embarrassed to walk out with a face all puffy. When I got sloshed out of my mind that night, I recall mentioning this to a friend in a pub's washroom. My guess is that she doesn't remember and I'd have it that way.

I think about that day a lot. The last three months when I was bummed, I would often go back to that day and think that if things had to be a certain way, it would be. Causation is the guiding force here. We can't make things happen out of thin air, every little thing has a solid reason behind it - for its existence, for its purpose to be fulfilled.

It made total sense to me then, when I realized, I burst out crying in the church because I was pms-ing unknowingly. My cycle had fucked completely and I got my period in exactly three weeks. In this case, three days after that incident when I was 35000 feet up in the air, crying and drinking about this whole journey coming to an end.

Sometimes, I wait for an episode in entirety to end, just so I can have the last laugh. So what if I didn't get the Commonwealth Scholarship to study Anthropology of Media. I went to a film school and learned puppetry and did theatre and met some great people who I know call friends. I don't have a loan to repay and I certainly don't have a care in the world, if it means for me to quit my job and sit my ass at home because it's not worth my time.

I guess I gave Jesus a lot more credit than he deserves when it was all about my unfertilized eggs. Years ago, when we were in school and working on "Easter" themed Bulletin Board design competition between classes, I recall Sr Joyce walking past and telling me, "Your eggs are flying" while signalling to the paper eggs I'd drawn. Never has anything made more sense than her premonition about this entire episode.

I no longer know how to write or what to write or what to even write on. Keeping that in mind, I'm doing a report of a sort. Everyone likes reports. Corporates pay dumbfucks all the fucking time and professionals in the creative fields who are hired by these corporates are forced to do the same. Everyone has to report. Well, mostly everyone.

I got published! Double spread byline in a leading national daily on a subject dear to my heart. It got a decent amount of appreciation. I was stoked because why the fuck not. Finally managed to channel my rage of losing someone important into writing.

I also got a publisher. A leading academic publisher in the UK decided to take our collaborative research project on board. If all goes well, or well, according to plan, I'll be published in a book in 2020. This is subject to if I survive to write that paper.

We lost a cat. In a freak road accident, some motherfucker killed our stray and left her kitten orphaned at our door. She's a total doll but isn't fond of me. I try to cuddle the fuck out of her but she won't let me. Consent is kinda real, she wins.

To make up for the lack of cuddling a cat, I found a human who permitted me to cuddle him and vice versa. Our transactional relationship is the stuff of dreams. There is hygiene, respect, consent, and cuddling. If you hear of someone starting subscription package to cuddling people during difficult times and seasons, hit me up. The mofo stole my idea.

I got a raise at work. Which was scheduled to happen last Summer but I won't crib. It happened is all, and I was relieved because the intimation for a meeting seemed ominous. Either that or I was overthinking the fuck about where to stay in Bangkok. A conversation for another day (aka never).

I have been waking up for the most part of days spent in the barsati to a nightmare. Of how I booked myself to go to Thailand (last minute- as always) and how absolutely uncomfortable I am with the idea, that even in my dream I start panicking, trying to cancel, only to find myself in the Baht Bus while the alarm rings. Waking up in a cocktail of drool and sweat is disgusting.

I gained four kilos of weight. It's the only thing weighing me down. I am sorry.
I survived three months without a drop of alcohol. Instead, I spent those calories on pizza, patties, kachodis. Basically, starting next month, I'm probably going back to alcohol. It was a shit decision. In 2018, I had pizza grand total of 3 times. In this trimester, I had pizza 4 times. I don't even fucking like pizza.

My mum started retailing some of her specialty food. She's down to treating the city with the best of Summer and Winter fermented food. It's been phenomenal with people reaching out placing orders with us doing bare minimum marketing. It's pretty much the only reason I survived January with a straight face.

I lost people close to me because it wasn't working out. For the sake of my mental well being, for the sake of my self-respect, and possibly for the sake of there being no love, respect or admiration from their side to me. It's okay. Shit happens. Worse things have happened and I've gotten out. These are just people, who are like furniture to my existence, just like I am to theirs.

It's easier to cut people out than to get over them. I wish someone had prepared me for that. No amount of resilience and pep talk can withstand the grief of losing people who meant something to you. Every commendable achievement or listing above is a testament of what I did in the face of grief to get out. Every unwritten post and writing here is a sign that I'm not past this and I am down the dumps.

I give myself three more trimesters to get past this funk. If it doesn't happen then we'll know something is wrong with me beyond normal, acceptable level of wrong.

A few months ago, at a client meeting, my boss was in conversation with a partner. Discussing vacation days, she looked at me and asked, "I think I took a lot of days off last year, didn't I? Yeah, but this year I didn't."

"Yeah, you went on these short-ish breaks."

I thought of that on my way back from the meeting. All day. Continued thinking about it, until one day when I was distracted by how much water weight I was gaining if I drank a glass of water empty stomach in the morning. That stole the show. My boss planned her vacations rather well. She travelled at least twice a month on these extended weekend trips. I'm sure it added to the bulk of money she spent but in turn, she got a lot more to experience and fewer vacation days at stake.

Last year, I took days off at a stretch and fell off the grid for work. Academic work, booty work, research work...you get the drift. While that did a lot to my head and helped me work better, it cost me all my paid leaves. Consequently, the last sixty days have gone with one odd day off. I told myself to stick to the amazing, already in motion plan that my boss is on. Extend long weekend and maximize vacation days that spread over a month at least.

By the time I came to that conclusion, I was down to my first failed vacation plan of the year. One long weekend I had took upon myself some freelance assignment to get over a man I had occupied my mental space with. It took four days and three edits, but mostly it took my time to distract myself from the fact that in the absence of no departure tickets, I had to cancel my arrival tickets. I lost money on that but then again, I wasn't sure if I needed more distraction to divert my attention from that man or my failed vacation plan. My colleague's husband who sweetly agreed to help me book tickets was bewildered when he heard, I was planning the vacation to each kachoris. A fact, I'm still proudly wearing on my sleeves, and er, posting here.

After deliberating my effectively smart, extending long weekend into bullet sized vacation plan, I jumped into action at the beginning of the year. I carved a full snow-beach-plains and god alone knows, all terrain vacation plan to be carried out in the long weekends spread across the calendar. For over a week, I researched for tickets all through the country to see where should I start and end.

I booked my tickets to Kashmir for this long weekend. You know, the one that starts in a few hours from now. One of my closest friend stays with his family there and has been fussing for years now for us to come over.

"I'm coming to your city. x" I dropped my text and screenshot my flight details. We spoke in detail, almost every day. About the bakeries, the lake, the snow and the walnut wood carved bed he allocated in the guest room for me. "I'm actually priortizing the furniture in the guest room for you more than my room". My friend and his Kashmiriyat had me.

Until last week when the news channels announced the bloodbath between India, Pakistan, and as always- Kashmir. In the middle of everything- my mini vacation plan. I understand my problems are miniscule, they don't matter.

In a large scheme of things, neither do I.

But here we are. And, this is my blog.

While soldiers are actually indeed dying on the border, and Ambani family is uniting with another business conglomerate's and all of Bollywood is attending that. At the same time, we're launching mobile apps, prepping for the largest possible election campaign and god knows everything in between- I can afford to safely talk about myself and my miniscule problems.

Where were we? Right, my flight.

I cancelled my flight after what seemed like all of India was trying to get me to cancel it. This list includes my colleague's husband who helped us book the arrival tickets from Aligarh to Delhi for kachodis, my college friends, my colleagues, my grandfather, friends, Tanu Dogra and others who I'm pretty sure don't care if I skip their name and affiliation.

It was a surprise when my refund was processed in entirety. It wasn't when they said they're releasing the prisoner of war.

Small price for a foiled vacation plan.

Or how my failed vacation ensured peace between India and Pakistan because I'm going to die without having ever seen snow.

I looked up my grandmother's name on Google. Other than showing two others by the same name, she was not there. She was nowhere to be found.

I often hold digital footprints of people close to me as their lasting memory. This spectrum is wide, it includes the last spotted on Snapchat location filter to the distance between my Tinder matches and I. Me? I don't do plebian last seen on Whatsapp because you give out just as much as you take in. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a big fan of what goes around/comes all the way back around regardless of whether Justin Timberlake was at his rugged peak at the time. I'm all for minimal investment and maximum benefit, in this case have the foolishness of control in your hand whilst exploiting the information locally available. Many relationships were nipped in the bud because of digital surveillance and many were forged basis that.

What? Does it sound like I'm Joe Goldberg in confession? Newsflash: we all are.
You can't blame me, as much as you should direct that towards the people putting their brains behind it. We live in a world which encourages us to flirt with the idea of being private while showing us the red flag to let loose.

Show of hands, who here has innocently looked up someone they had no business of looking up?

I know a few who'd be all virgin about it. And that's a big fat lie because surveillance is deep-rooted, intrinsic and a different side to the same coin that this internet today promotes.

Where was I? Yes, my grandmother.

My dear departed grandmother, who was bedridden when I spent my energies using the dial-up connection and waste time on Yahoo Messenger. The Summer after she passed away, all the cool kids at the tuition centre were each other's friends on Hi5. I was one among them; one of the only four people from a batch of one fifty strong kids from my school who were wasting time looking up their 13-14 year old crushes and hoping they'd exchange atleast one testimonial with "I relly llyk yu lollzzzz".

The internet grew up, parallel to me. The only difference? My grandmother lost on both our teenaged years. She was long gone before digital legacy was a real thing. Maybe, it wasn't big or all over the digital media but I don't recall splashing names of people and writing about them right after their demise. She wasn't around to see me through my Orkut walls being flooded with emoji templates, Myspace music and gifs, and/or my Facebook wall. Heck, she wasn't around to see me with my fancy Motorola cell phone(with an exceptional 5 MB internal space to store photographs, music, ringtone, and videos- the irony). She's lost in the giant pre-digital universe of the noughties. It's like she never existed. It also matters because she only lived to see Reliance's digital telecom revolution with Karlo duniya mutthi me and free Reliance to Reliance phonecalls. She's not wired in to know that Jio is the new Reliance to Reliance and that number portability is a thing. I often sit and wonder how would she react to the new media. To my self-destructive dating patterns, to the terrible decisions, I make with the men I've dated and are yet to date. I don't know and I won't ever know. It's lost in the same space where USB drives are often lost.

To exist is to be on the internet. I think, therefore I am on the internet.
Each year, when people pass away, the internet opens itself to a larger than life column for the obituary. From op-eds to commissioned pieces, to even personal dedications in closed accounts, the idea of safekeeping memories of someone who may or may not have been on social media is carefully sealed and preserved under tight private accounts and digital publications with fervour. It's almost as if the internet reflects the life as a memoir on social media, only to announce the obit as an epilogue and the memorials as the endorsements on the back cover and inlay flap. My grandmother is devoid of such an honour, of this digital afterlife. It's not a big deal. For all you know, she'd have shat on it. But knowing her, she'd have loved to be the centre of attention. For her, everything was a big deal. I probably get the sense of making things larger than life from her. The dramatization of every banal occurence and making it into an event was all her. It upsets me to think, she doesn't exist in this cool space here.

What used to be a fetishistic idea of seeing how one's funeral would look like has now turned to, how will people pay homage to me on social media. Again, I refuse to believe this thought hasn't occurred your mind. Facebook apparently has some settings where you can pass your digital legacy as a will in advance. In the likely event of your mortal life ceasing to exist, that chosen one is offered the right to control your digital profile. So much so for resting in peace.

It was all kinds of heartbreaking to see no valuable result on my grandmother's name. For someone who raised me to be a complete spoilt brat and to pander to my whims and fancies as a child, this is upsetting at all levels.

I can't get myself to type this out for someone who's not with us anymore but here's wishing her a happy birthday. I hope someday I have just as much élan as you did each time when you cut and style your hair on your own.

As a part of my resolution which includes productive writing more than feeling, I intend to spruce this space up with things. Starting with the one that I know the best (also universally applicable) - heartbreak.

A broken heart is a work of art. It is performative, in ways you repeat the story over and over again. You narrate this over an 11 pm phone call to that friend's friend who doesn't know your second name but he knows you had a pregnancy scare with the guy who's now responsible for smashing your heart in smithereens. Heartbreaks render an affective turn, the kind that makes you gaze inwards and change your line of thought- towards heteronormative relationships. The kind that makes you realize, if only sexual orientation could be a choice one could simply make. The same kind of choice as one makes with a crisp toast- do I want salted butter or mixed fruit jam or both to go with this toast? A wailing heart finds joys in multiple cups of strong cappuccino knowing very well that it's going to cause digestive problems in the next few hours but holding that cup warms the cockles of their hand and heart, the kind which was only possible with absolutely nothing a night before the showdown with the supposed affection of their life.

There are no right words that could be said to help someone get past the pain of losing another individual, who to the misfortune of the owner of the broken heart, is very much alive and kicking and prancing around us. Unless one takes the bold move on social media to block them, they continue to haunt us, ghost us and terrify us with their presence. In the recent past, I've come to realize that most people who are sinking innit and trying to swim and save their lives have absolutely no support. Mostly because there's rarely someone who knows what to say to make one feel better.

I'm inviting entries and curating a post full of anonymous stories, with the aim for us all to find some sense of catharsis. One from you, about you; to finding that closure or helping someone find one. God alone knows how many of us keep these feels bottled and find ourselves engaging with banalities to pass this grief.

I know, I write my grief out. I hammer the words down until I feel nothing. For all my self-destruction, I know how to rise like a phoenix from the as(s)holes.

Here's what I'm looking for-

1) Prose, haiku, rap, on your worst/funniest/most terrible/truly terrifying heartbreak tale you've lived to tell.
2) Prose could be anywhere between 350-500 words. Haiku and rap just about enough to make sure people are not leaving the post to go window shop on amazon.in
3) Keep it simple. While I love me the details of what brand of alcohol bottle did you take swigs of whiskey out from before he hit on your friend, I would encourage you to dig deeper and see if you would like to share how you felt when you saw it happen. The more you're in touch with what you feel, the closer you would feel to a cathartic experience.
4) Have fun writing it. If this is the worst that's ever happened to you, or will ever do, know that it's over and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. Unless you have a self-destructive gene like me, in which case, good luck and godspeed. Breaking the heart is so 2005. Bacon your heart and make it delectable for others to stop and take a bite.

Here's how you can help-

1) Write. For me, to know I'm not alone. For yourself, to know this will make you stronger. For others, to show that we have all been there.
2) Share this post. Someone somewhere is experiencing gut-wrenching pain about someone who doesn't give two hoots about them. Fuck them. Instead, focus on those who truly hurt themselves in process of getting attached when they shouldn't have, for whatever reason there may be.
3) Be fabulous. Don't let anyone tell you about your eyebrows being too thin or your hands being too big. You know what they say about people with big hands? I don't know, but if you do, keep it to yourself.

Submit your entries and encourage your local Spiderperson to share their entry on snobrellaATgmailDOTcom. Last date for submission is 20 January, 2019.